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who are both geniuses being born of two genius parents who also each had at least one genius parent. But in our families, there is also a high rate of social fallibility and high temper etc. Numerous times I was told to get my son medicated by school officials, but I refused. Now I was a stay at home Mom so I was able to "teach" him out of his temper. It was a childhood long commitment, constantly making sure to help his intelligence over rule his emotions. Catch phrases like, "who ever loses their temper is the loser, remember that." And being willing to accept that when I lost my temper (yes, he inherited it, but through helping him, I also helped myself), anyway when I lost my temper, I got pegged a loser as well, never had a double standard. My daughter was more socially adept until late jr. high when she went into a severe depression. Again I was advised to put her on pills, but instead I beat her with a stick. . . no really, the stick only touched her once, but I would've kept hitting if necessary.
Long story short, she wouldn't get out of her room, wouldn't talk to her friends, nothing, for about three months. So I dragged her out of her bed, shoved her out the front door with a $20 and told her to go do something, ANYTHING, but don't come back till she had done something for herself. She wouldn't go so I picked up a stick and hit her. She came back a few hours later after having coffee at the local coffee house and had a good time. Once she realized that she wasn't going to get the normal treatment for depression, she was more agreeable to locating the cause of the depression.
Guess what it was, . . . you'll never guess, but if you are a parent you need to hear. It was a constant diet of one or two musicians, Heather Nova and (oops, I can't remember the other one but he sang a lot about suicide and how the world sucks). We tested out the idea by putting her on restriction from those artists for about a month and she's been fine ever since. She still listens to those and similar artists, but she's learned not to have steady diet of such songs.
Anyway, I am glad for my children that I am such and obstinate, bitchy, hard-nosed, unbeliever when it comes to modern medicine. I have no doubt that my children are much better and much safer than they would have been had we gotten roped into the crap most of their friends went (and are still going into their middle 20s) through. Many of them are now on multiple mental pills per day, disgusting, and since they lose their effectiveness over time, I would guess that it will only get worse as they age.
For me, well, I've accepted myself with mental illness. Due to severe child abuse, like broken and bleeding child abuse, I have a mental condition which was misdiagnosed many times, but I only agreed to take pills once. Within a week I flushed them, I couldn't stand the whole zombie thing. Now that my daughter is in the social working arena, we've finally gotten to a legitimate diagnosis with both of us trying really hard in the past six months to research this (the years of unemployment and stagnant biz have made some of my "problems" more invasive than when I was busy and busy and busy). Anyway, once we figured out my accurate diagnosis, turns out there's no pill that will help anyway. So I'm screwed, but not so much that I couldn't make sure my children could grow up to be drug free (okay they sometimes partake in pot, but no pharmas).
Actually now that I think about it, it's probably a side effect of my mental problems that I didn't let my kids get medicated. One of the primary symptoms of my disorder is refusal to trust or even respect authority figures, and for some reason that I cannot fathom, most Americans think that doctors are authority figures. They all seem too befuddled to realize that their bodies and minds are their own, and that they need to be in charge. Doctors used to dump me regularly because I would be sure to remind them that they work for me, they don't rule me, therefore their concerns and advice were informational, not directives. Docs don't like it when you won't submit to them. Due to that, I've not seen a doc for anything, not a cold, not a blown out knee, not a nail through my foot, not when I contracted MRSA, nothing, since 1991, and I rue the day I may actually have to have help. My children do see doctors, but they know to keep them in line and to make their own decisions.
Wow, when I started this post, I was just going to type about a sentence. I guess I needed to release this, thanks for "listening."
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